May 03, 2013

Kerri Bradford Studio: Kitchen DIY Project

I have a fun new project up at Kerri Bradford Studio today. Usually, I'm all about the layouts and cards. Maybe an occasional altered project, if I'm feeling daring. I decided to branch out for this next one. I chose to turn my kitchen into my next Silhouette project!

A little backstory first. I am a huge Rachael Ray fan, and I record her talk show every day. They did a segment way back last summer (seen HERE) about "quick fixes" around the house, for those types of things that would normally cost a fortune and require major work. One of those ideas was how to do a quick fix on kitchen or bathroom tiles. The idea shown involved these vinyl squares that you could just stick over the tiles you already had. I looked up the site they recommended and there were about three designs to chose from, and they weren't cute. Soooooo. Why not create my own vinyl squares?

{Please ignore the obviously-not-staged look of my kitchen in this three year old photo. Especially the two remaining tator tots on the baking sheet.}

You see, I can't stand my tile backsplash in the kitchen. We bought this house before it had even started being built. And one of the very first questions, on the day we signed papers to get our name on the lot, was if we wanted a tile backsplash. Right along with the questions of whether we wanted the upstairs loft addition (yes), the studio addition over the garage (no), and where we wanted additional outlets and ceiling fan hook-ups. A tile backsplash? We had no clue to be honest, so we said "yes". I'm sure if it was different tile then the counter tiles (which I can't stand either), maybe I wouldn't detest them so much. Everything in our kitchen blends together too much, and the backsplash was just super boring to me.

But now? I don't think it's boring at all! In fact, I think it's a bit bold and I think it has a certain "wow" factor. I've had a few people see it already and they've all said "what IS that?", and they were a little shocked to learn that I had basically "stickered" my backsplash with a whole new look.

I love circles, so it was an easy decision to use the circle background from Kerri's More Background Basics kit. I knew my tiles were 6" square in size, so I just sized my squares to about 5.8" square in size.

In making them a bit smaller than the 6", I could easily fit four squares on a sheet of vinyl. Speaking of the vinyl. I actually used Making Memories vinyl sheets for this entire project. I had a ton of them on hand, from when I designed for them, and they worked perfectly in my Cameo. The Making Memories vinyl came in 12"x12" sheets, and there were 10-12 sheets in a pack (I'm drawing a blank on whether it was 10 or 12).

These sheets came in white and black, so black was the obvious choice. Silhouette carries vinyl in a ton of colors (seen HERE), and it can be purchased in the 12" width rolls as well as the 9" width rolls. So you could easily cut those rolls down into 12"x12" sheets.

Once I had a few sheets cut, I just started peeling and sticking them on. I definitely questioned myself along the way, if I'm being totally honest. It was hard to imagine the final look, with only certain tiles covered here and there.

There was nothing hard about this. I cleaned off the tiles and wiped them super clean. I let the Cameo do all the cutting while I went about other things around the house. I would cut one sheet, then come back and cut another, and then another. I would randomly peel them off and stick them on, as I was doing other things.

There were times when I couldn't stop. You cover a few, and it makes you want to cover a few more, and then a few more. I would avoid the tiles that involved a little trimming, or removing outlet plates. I'd do all the easy ones first.

I loved that the vinyl was so easy to work with. In doing all of these tiles, peeling of square after square, I didn't have any of them tear on me. They were super easy to line up and stick down. I rarely encountered any bubble-age either. They went on really smoothly.

I have this little angled section of the counter, with a small "shelf" of tiles. I had six tiles that weren't quite 6" square, so I did have to resize a few squares to make them a little smaller.

When I came to some of the edges (by the window, for example), I just made it work. I eyeballed where they needed to be cut, and used my trimmer to cut them down BEFORE peeling them off the sheet.

I did make one more change during this project. We have 2" wood blinds all through our house. The kitchen and family room had the wood colored blinds, and the rest of the house had white blinds. Eleven years ago, I was all about "oak wood", so the wood colored blinds made sense. I'm NOT a fan of so much oak anymore (much to my mother's dismay). I thought it was the perfect time to switch the kitchen and family room blinds over to the white wood ones. It was much cheaper than I thought, and I'm so glad we did it. It's so much lighter in here now.

My mom saw this and said it would take some getting used too, and my brother saw a few photos and said he wouldn't pick something that bold. But I think it really works with the decor in our house. Over the years, I've added in lots of black, whether through furniture, frames, black canvas prints (lots of those!), and decor pieces.

My goal is to take away some of the oak and light wood, and to at least break up some of the neutral wood/floors/counters/walls that seem to blend together.

Confession time. I still have three little tiles behind this frame that I didn't put the vinyl on yet. I didn't want to shock anyone be actually finishing this project 100%, would I? Lol. The only reason that I haven't covered these yet, is because it involves removing a few outlet covers, including the phone jack and the internet stuff. And heaven forbid I unplug that stuff. With my luck, the internet would never come back on. But I will get to it soon, because I hate seeing the bare tiles peeking out from either side of the frame.

All in all, I cut 124 squares of vinyl, using 31 of my 12"x12" vinyl sheets. I already owned the vinyl, so this project didn't cost me a thing. BUT. If I did have to buy the vinyl, and I bought it from the Silhouette store (since the MM sheets would be hard to find these days), I would have only needed 5-6 rolls of the vinyl. So this project would have cost me only $60 or so, which isn't bad at all for a DIY home improvement project.

I still have more sheets leftover, which will come in handy if I need to replace any. I'm thinking the ones behind/above the stove might need to be replaced at some point, since they're bound to get a little dirtier from cooking. I'm actually keeping that area a lot cleaner now, since I'm always checking to see if anything splattered up there. Lol. And the great thing is that if I change my mind at some point, or if I get sick of the look, I just have to peel them all off.

And here's the fun part. I now have over 3,000 black vinyl circles that I can use for something.These are the negative pieces, after peeling off the squares. Each square gave me 25 circles, times 124, is 3,100 circles. I saved them all, even though I'm not sure what I'll do with them yet. I keep saying that I'm going to polka-dot the heck out of something ;)